La Vida Local 02: The Village Shop

Yesterday I drove back home from Sheepwash in Devon after a wonderful week at Retreats for You with Deb and Bob (highly recommended if you are working on a book, writing a thesis or just need some time out to paint, read or relax).  Knowing that I would get home to empty cupboards late on Saturday evening and curious to get the full village experience, I nipped over to the Sheepwash Community Stores.

With less than 200 residents, Sheepwash is a picturesque Devonshire hamlet with one pub, three churches and one very tiny shop.  The converted front room is literally bursting with fresh and packaged produce, drinks, toiletries, stationary, household items and a post office counter.  It was rather like a miniature supermarket with two or three shelves for each department and just enough room to swing a basket. 

La Vida Local 01: A New Year's Resolution

Happy New Year!

After a long hiatus, I am finally beginning another of my projects blogs.  I hope this one will be read all over the world but it is focussed entirely on my immediate surroundings.

Last month, I had the pleasure of offering home hospitality to a delegate of the first National Conference for Community Supported Agriculture.  This wonderful scheme, about which you will hear much more, is one of the many reasons I am so happy with my move to Stroud.

It was during a social event for conference-goers and interested locals that I somehow managed to commit myself to three months of spending my money only in local and independent economies.

I cannot stop paying my mortgage or refuse to go to work so I have had to refine the rules a little.  I have run down my cupboards to make it as realistically challenging as possible and done a bit of advance research to prevent any major disasters in the first week.

This is my pledge for January, February and March 2014:

Living Below the Line 06: Day Five: The Finish Line

Flumps!  That was all it bought me.  A 10g Flumps Twist.  Not very exciting, not very filling and not very nutritious.  But it was much harder than I had anticipated to purchase something for just 10p in the supermarket.  It was the wrong time of day and perhaps the wrong part of the country (Cheltenham) for serious bargains in the reduced section so I tried my lie with loose fruit, priced by the weight.  The cheapest apples were £1.19 per kilo but the smallest apple still came to 21p.  Bananas were just 69p per kilo but the cheapest single fruit I could find would have been 12p.

Next I tried the deli counter where you can buy any quantity you desire.  Identifying the lowest-priced cheese as Red Leicester at £6.60 per kilo, I asked how much I could get for 10p and was told that I could get the amount he would give me for free anyway if I asked to taste the product.  This was not exactly the point but I deduced that 10p does not buy you very much cheese!  Walking up and down the aisles, I scoured any product that bore a sub-10p price tag and eventually spotted one in the confectionary section.  Flumps!  Airy, bland marshmallows that claim to be fat-free (they are pretty much everything-free) and naturally flavoured (with sugar).

Living Below the Line 05: Day Four: No Variety and No Spice

I have now eaten tasteless cornflakes with watery milk for four days, bland rice, bland veg, dry oranges and bland noodles.  I am bored.  I cannot afford to add salt or spices to anything so everything tastes much the same – of not much.  And it all looks pretty similar too – pale and uniform, a substance in a bowl.  I have started to notice that the boredom of palate has led to some unusual behavior.  While the lack of nutrition may be taking its physical toll, the lack of variety seems to be taking its psychological toll.

Even though I am feeling hungry most of the time, when I do sit down to eat these anemic dishes, I have no appetite for them.  I eat them quickly and unthinkingly; the aim is to get fuel inside as quickly as possible and they are gone before I have noticed I have eaten them.  Three times today I forgot to take photographs of the food before eating because the mindless need to consume something took over before I had a chance to think about my photo-journal.  I love food.  I love flavours and textures and colours and spice; but this is sustenance not food.

Living Below the Line 04: Day Three: The Hunger Pains

Today I started to feel bad.  I am not really hungry – a bit hungry perhaps, but not too hungry.  But I do feel bad.  I feel dizzy and weak and my vision is slightly blurry.  My skin is dull and my feet are stone cold.  After three days of eating only about 1600 calories, I would not have expected to feel like this; so I can only conclude that it is what I am eating and not how much I am eating that is having this detrimental effect.

There is really very little nutritional value in most of it.  I am used to eating more, admittedly, but I am also used to eating a pretty healthy diet (most of the time!).  An average breakfast might consist of poached eggs on seeded toast with slices of tomato followed by an apple or a banana mid-morning.  A lazy lunch might be a tuna and salad wrap and if I am more organized I might bring rye crackers, salad and hummus from home; while a typical after work dinners tofu and vegetable stir fry with buckwheat noodles or brown rice.  There may be an opportunity for a couple of biscuits or a slice of cake at some point in the day but overall, it is a diet that includes reasonably healthy protein, plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables and mostly whole grains.

Living Below the Line 03: Day Two: Burnt Pasta and an Awkward Reception

I am on the tube on the way home Liberal Judaism's Patron's Dinner at the House of Lords.  I have not had dinner.  I am hungry and I am not really looking forward to the boiled rice, boiled vegetables and two Quorn sausages that await me at home, having just seen the menu for this evening's event and caught sight of the bread baskets as I discretely left.

I knew when I chose this week to Live Below the Line that I would have to take some difficult decisions about how to handle a number of food-related work activities.  It was clear that eating a four course meal, served by waiters (whom I hope are receiving the London Living Wage) and overlooking the Thames was not an appropriate way to experience hunger.  But not attending would be letting my colleagues down and sitting in front of an empty plate would be embarrassing and awkward for those around me.  The compromise was to be present at the reception and quietly slip away as everyone sat down.

Living Below the Line 02: Day One: Shopping and First Foods

I had planned to do research; I did none.  I had planned to make a shopping list; I did not.  I had planned to shop on Sunday so I would be ready; I was not.  I woke up this morning on Day One of my Living Below the Line and remembered that I could not consume anything except tap water until I had been to the Supermarket to spend my fiver.

The first decision was which supermarket to go to.  Tesco and Asda are the cheapest but I have ethical and quality reservations about them; Waitrose is far more ethical but my £5 would not go very far.  I settled on Morrisons – it has a family-business feel to it, always has good quality fresh produce and is cheap enough to give me hope that I will not starve.

The first realisation was that I could not have chosen to go to Morrisons if I did not have a car sitting outside my house with expensive petrol in the tank.  I would have had to go to Waitrose, which is only a five-minute walk away or spend half of my daily budget taking the bus to and from Tesco.  Even the ability to make a choice about where I buy my food is a privilege of wealth!